2024 ACE Australasian Infective Endocarditis Hybrid Symposium

Messages about participation in the ACE IE registry design , joining ACE as a member and EOIs for ACE Commitee are immediately below the flyer and icons and are also on ACE home-page.

Remainder of this page details the actual symposium including speaker profiles.

Symposium endorsed by:

Symposium sponsired by:

Download Syposium Flyer  and Program (PDF) below

2024 ACE IE symposium flyer (PDF, 1.1 MB)

Flyer updated 15th September.

Thank you to all who participated to make the symposium a sucess!

Further important messages soon! (see ACE home-page for messages) 

Exciting news! Opportunity to road-test the ACE IE registry

An invitation to anyone with an IE interest to road-test  the ACE IE registry, with an proposed open meeting in November provisionally November 27th 5pm-7pm EST/QLD time to discuss this concept. Further details on joining the meeting soon! All those who make a meaningful road-test/input in registry design  will be acknowledged when project completed! The ACE IE registry is based on the ground-breaking Danish-Swedish NIDUS registry, but with additions for an Australasian mileu, and with the concept of 3 levels/tiers (non-CTS centres, CTS centres and voluntary). The November session is likely the only open planning session- don't miss it!

Be part of history!!

A link to the dedicated datafields/registry page is below.

Collaborations/ IE registry design

(limited time offer) Opportunity to join ACE or EOI for ACE Committee(s)

This is an exciting time for ACE!

Open invitation (esp for symposium attendees) to join ACE (for QLD members, you also get complementary ieQ membership).

Also call for EOI for ACE Committe members.

If you feel you can contribute to ACE's journey, EOIs are now open for Committee positions.

For membership or commitee EOIs, please email ieq@health.qld.gov.au

Program

Session 1

Chairs: Eugene Athan and Mbakise Matebele

0845:  Welcome to country

09.00 ACE Committee. Opening Comments.

09.10 David Durack. "Evolution of Diagnostic Criteria for IE over 60 years".

09.20 Robin Patel. "Diagnosis of Infective endocarditis".

09.40 Cristiane da Cruz Lamas. "Staphylococcus lugdunensis: an aggressive agent of infective endocarditis".

10.00 Dylan Bartholomeusz. "18FDG PET-CT scanning in endocarditis- echoes  of the  future?".

10.20 Russell Denman. "Role of Lead Extraction in management of device related infections"

10.40 morning tea

Session 2

Chairs: Emily Tucker and Dylan Batholomeusz

11.00 ACE Committee. "ACE registry and discussion".

11.30  Proferred paper 1: Natasha Vaselli. "A retrospective study investigating the Aetiology and outcomes of Blood Culture Negative Endocarditis in a Tertiary Centre in Queensland"

11.40 Proferred paper 2: Ernest Tee. "Single-centre Case series of Gram-negative infective endocarditis and cardiac implantable electronic device infections

11.50 ACE Committee "MDT session"

12.30 lunch

Session 3

Chairs: Kanthi Vemuri and  John Sedgwick

1.30 Mbakise Matebele."IE in the critically ill"

1.50 Cassandra Vale. "Beta-Lactam TDM".

2.10 Proffered paper 3.Simon Briggs."Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy for patients with Enterococcus faecalis endocarditis using continuous infusion intravenous benzylpenicillin plus intravenous ceftriaxone".

2.20. Proffered paper 4 Fahed Ahmad."Bicuspid aortic valve endocarditis: A tertiary institution retrospective cohort study".

2.30. Best poster oral presentation

2.40. Anna Stahl " increased risk of infective endocarditis following transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP)".

3.00 afternoon tea

Session 4

Chairs: Renjy Nelson and TBA

3.20. Douglas Wall."Surgery in IE"  (Australian perspective).

3.40 Carlos Mestres. "surgery in IE (International Perspective)".

4.00 Arístides de Alarcón González. "Treatment of Chronic Q fever: a continuing challenge".

4.20 Emil Fosbøl. "NIDUS registry- trying to describe the true epidemiology of IE".

4.40 Closing Comments

7PM Networking dinner at "W"

The Speakers:

Robin Patel (Mayo, USA)

Robin Patel is the Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine and the Director of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, Co-Director of the Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory, Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, and former Chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology, at the Mayo Clinic.    

Since the beginning of her tenure at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Patel has focused her research on bacterial infections. Her work focuses on three major areas: (1) improvement of next-generation diagnostic techniques for infectious diseases, (2) understanding the inherent biology of periprosthetic infection, and (3) understanding antibiotic resistance through a clinical lens. She has published over 600 peer-reviewed publications and is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is the Director of the Laboratory Center of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Patel received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Princeton University, where she graduated magna cum laude. From there, she obtained a medical degree from McGill University. Afterwards, Dr. Patel completed Internal Medicine Residency and Fellowships in Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the Mayo Clinic. Since then, she has been involved in setting standards for diagnostic and clinical care of bacterial infections, as evidenced by the (select) positions she has held or holds within the American Society for Microbiology (President, Secretary), American Board of Pathology (Microbiology Test Writing Committee Member), Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Voting Member), National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Council Member), National Board of Medical Examiners (Microbiology/Immunology Test Material Development Committee Chair), Journal of Clinical Microbiology (Associate Editor), Clinical Infectious Diseases (Associate Editor) and the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (Voting Member).

In addition, Dr. Patel’s continued commitment to mentorship can be translated into a long list of trainees from around the world; she had dedicated hours of teaching to train the next generation of clinical and research laboratory scientists.

More information can be found at: https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JCM.01259-20

Topic: "diagnosis of endocarditis"

David Durack (Duke, USA)

Dr. David T Durack is Consulting Professor of Medicine at Duke University, and was Senior Vice President, Corporate Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer at Becton Dickinson & Co. (retired 10/2012). Education: Correspondence School of West Australia; Scotch College, West Australia; University of West Australia medical degree 1969; Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University UK 1970-73, Doctor of Philosophy 1973, doctoral thesis entitled "Experimental Endocarditis". Internship and residency at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London. Chief Resident and Faculty member, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, ’74-’77.  Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health and Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology, Duke University, ’77-’94. Research interests: pathogenesis and chemotherapy of infective endocarditis and other bacterial, viral and fungal infections. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the American College of Physicians; he has published more than 230 articles and textbook chapters and co-edited several textbooks. Dr. Durack has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Council of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Academy of Microbiology and the Council of the International Society for Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases. He has served on an FDA Review Panel, a Veterans Affairs Review Panel, the Joint Commission Resources Board of Directors and as Chairman of the Board, ASM Resources. In addition to his clinical and research activities, he has 17 years’ experience as a senior executive in the medical devices and diagnostics industry, and currently provides consultation to medical technology companies.

Speaking topic: "Evolution of Diagnostic Criteria for IE over 60 years."

Emil Fosbøl (Denmark)

Emil L Fosbol, MD, PhD

Emil is Professor of cardiology, with focus on valvular heart diseases at the University of Copenhagen. He is also a senior consultant cardiologist at The Heart Centre, University Hospital of Copenhagen, Rigshospitalet, and department-chief of the department for valvular diseases. He is associate editor of The European Heart Journal and Associate Editor of The American Heart Journal. As well as Denmark, his research career has included a post-doc fellowship at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. His research metrics include a H-index of 57, 424 published papers (including 33 first authorships and 112 last authorships) and 9213 citations. He has supervised 17 PhDs (5 as main supervisor), and 32 research-year medical students. He currently serves on the ESC endocarditis guidelines commitee. He is chair of 5 RCTs - ASTERIx, CuDOS, CROWD-HF, EMPAVR, CIEDLESS and CIEDOUT, and on steering commitee of POET, POET2 and ENDO-HOT. He has been successful in mutiple grants totaling approximately 34 DKK in value (about $7.5 Million AUD).

Speaking topic:  " NIDUS registry- trying to describe the true epidemiology of IE"

Cristiane Lamas (Brazil)

Cristiane Lamas is an infectious diseases physician; she did her residency in the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ); and her Master's Degree and PhD in Tropical Medicine at FIOCRUZ,  Rio de Janeiro , Brazil. She works in Rio de Janeiro at Instituto Nacional de Cardiologia, where she leads the research group on infective endocarditis and has collaborated with the International Collaboration on Endocarditis, ICE, initiative, since 2006. She is also a consultant at the Evandro Chagas Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fiocruz. Main interests are infective endocarditis, other valve diseases, rickettsia strictu sensu and latu sensu (Bartonella spp, Coxiella burnetii), nosocomial infections, systemic mycosis, HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections. She is an active member of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases (Sociedade Brasileira de Infectologia) and of the International Society of Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases (ISCVID).

Topic: "Staphylococcus lugdunensis: an aggressive agent of infective endocarditis".

S.lugdunensis has been proposed as a new major microbiological criterion by the Duke-ISCVID 2023 revision. We look at it closely, after analysing over 100 recent multicentric cases of S.lugdunensis IE.

Arístides de Alarcón González (Spain)

Dr Alarcón is a specialist in Infectious Diseases, with a special interest in cardiovascular infections. Member of the group for the support for the management of endocarditis in Spain, he has made outstanding research in the field of infective endocarditis and cardiac electrostimulation device infections. He is the author of several publications on Coxiella burnettii infections, and coordinates a Spanish research group in this field.

"Treatment of Chronic Q fever: a continuing challenge"

Q fever is a worldwide zoonosis, endemic in many countries with seroprevalence rates of about 15%. The clinical picture is usually benign and self-limiting, with fever and hepatitis or pneumonia. However, for unknown reasons Coxiella burnetti can evolve into persistent focal forms (1-5%), mainly in patients with cardiac or vascular prostheses as well as aneurysms and damaged heart valves. The diagnosis of these chronic forms is nowadays well based on molecular methods (PCR) but also on a characteristic serological pattern with elevated phase I antibodies. Combination therapy is assumed to be superior to doxycycline monotherapy, with combinations of doxycycline with quinolones or hydroxychloroquine being used, although the latter regimen has not shown clear superiority but increased toxicity. Furthermore, other possible regimens (combinations with rifampicin or co-trimoxazole) have been little explored. Another essential point is how long we should treat. We know that relapses often occur in less than a year, but the ultimate duration is unclear. The French authors have proposed to treat until a decrease of at least 4 times the Ab titres against phase I or below 1/1024 dilution. However, this recommendation has proven to have little consistency due to occasional variations in titres over time and because, in some patients, titres take more than five years to fall, or remain elevated for life. Moreover, recurrences have been observed after many years of completion. Treatments of 18-24 months seem reasonable and will be discussed, but there is a need for a large-scale clinical trial to resolve so many doubts.

Carlos Mestres (Switzerland)

Carlos A. Mestres MD PhD FETCS

Carlos – A. Mestres, MD, PhD, FETCS, is currently an Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and the Robert W.M. Frater Cardiovascular Research Centre, The University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, appointed 2018. Dr. Mestres has experience and expertise in Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery. Dr. Mestres received his medical degree in 1979 and his PhD in 1988 from the University of Barcelona. He served as Senior Consultant in the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, University Hospital Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland (August 2017-September 2021) where he transitioned after there years as Staff Surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, UAE (August 2014-2017) and thirty years as Senior Consultant at the Hospital Clinico, University of Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain (1985-2014). His research interest includes antiplatelet drugs, the behaviour of vascular grafts and homografts, aortic diseases and cardiovascular infections. He is active in clinical surgery. He has shown particular interest in inflammatory and infectious diseases of the cardiovascular system in addition to the regular practice in all areas of surgery (especially endocarditis and HIV-1 infection), cardiovascular tissues (homograft valves and arteries), coronary surgery, valve surgery and surgery of the aorta, biomaterials, and medical devices. As a member of the Hospital Clinico Endocarditis Working Group, active for over three decades, several studies and publications were produced over the years. Dr. Mestres has participated in the development of Cardiovascular Tissue banking in Spain, first of its kind in the country. Dr. Mestres also participated in the development of the Endocarditis Board at the University Hospital Zürich, Zürich (Switzerland), the 5-year experience of the Board recently reported. Currently, Dr. Mestres has over 399 international publications in peer-reviewed international journals, 139 domestic publications in Spanish journals and over 30 chapters in books. (h-index 62, i10-index 183). He was a member of the Spanish National Cardiovascular Council, the regulatory body for Specialty training (1997-2006). He was a member of the European Board of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons (EBTCS) (2005-2018) and continues to be an Examiner of the EBCTS. More recently, in March 2024, he has participated in the implementation of the first examination of the EBTCS Cardiovascular Critical Care. He also serves in the Editorial Board of several scientific journals covering the specialty of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery. Among them: He served as a reviewer of the 2015 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Guideline for the Management of Infective Endocarditis and Task Force Member of the 2024 and 2023 ESC Infective Endocarditis Guideline and currently serves in other Working Groups and Consensus Documents of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery (EACTS). He served as President of the Spanish Society of Cardiovascular Infections (SEICAV) (2013-2015). He served as Director of the Teaching Programme of the CAS-Certificate of Advanced Studies in Structural Cardiac Interventions issued by the University of Zürich, aiming at defining the leaders of the Heart Teams in the future (2017-2021). He enjoys reading, music, cricket and travelling among other activities of all kinds.

Topic: Surgery in complex endocarditis.

Surgery for IE remains challenging although surgical techniques improved and surgeons with special dedication acquired skills and experience allowing them treating more complex cases. Surgical therapy is a part of a multidisciplinary approach. The profile of patients with IE changed, they are older with more comorbidities and are admitted with systemic complications needing meticulous evaluation and pre-treatment. Patients with isolated aortic valve IE could be electively operated due to valvular dysfunction after successful medical treatment. In most of these cases the mechanism of dysfunction is related to a perforation of one or more leaflet or the destruction of regional components. The indication for surgery in these cases follows the current guidelines. Replacement of the native valve is traditionally performed to avoid recurrence of IE and long-term consequences of valvular dysfunction. Biological or mechanical prostheses are implanted with good results. Valve repair when feasible, in the mitral position, is associated with better long-term results. In case of urgent or emergent surgery, the procedure is usually more challenging. The indication could be related to acute valve dysfunction often with heart failure or local aggressiveness with abscess formation, de novo conduction disturbance with or without sepsis. The aortic valve is the mostly involved in these cases and the extension of the infection to the fibrous trigones requires extensive debridement with more demanding surgery including root replacement, double valve surgery and reconstruction of the destroyed fibrosa. PVE represents the most serious form of IE. Frequently, radical surgery is the only treatment able to modify the natural history of the disease. PVE surgery could be demanding and should be performed by a skilled and experienced team. The challenging nature of such surgery is related to several factors. As these are reoperations with patients in suboptimal preoperative condition, there is higher morbidity and mortality in comparison with first-time surgery. From the surgical standpoint, these procedures are demanding, especially in the case of abscess formation. The need for extended surgical procedures like root replacement or re-replacement are cumbersome and entail long periods of cardiac ischemia. In case of destruction of the fibrous skeleton of the heart, a more extended reconstruction may be required. The so-called “commando” or “hemi-commando” operations could be an option. Moreover, such operations require long cardiopulmonary bypass, ischemic and overall operative times, which increase further the risk of postoperative complications. Extreme cases of cardiac destruction may require heart transplantation as it has been reported. This is an old option in desperate cases but requires a microbiologically controlled status.

Anna Stahl (Denmark)

Anna Stahl, medical doctor, PhD-student,

The Heart Center, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark.

Main research areas: Epidemiology of infective endocarditis, bacteremia and procedure related endocarditis. 

Peter Laursen Graversen

Russell Denman

Douglas Wall (CTS)

Dr Doug Wall  Bsc, MBBS, FRACS (CTS)

He is a Senior Visiting Medical Officer  (Cardiothoracic Surgery) at the Prince Charles Hospital. He is one of the states Lung Transplant Surgeons. Doug has private rooms at St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital (Spring Hill, QLD), St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside (Chermside, QLD) and Buderim Private Hospital (Buderim, QLD)

He is a graduate of the University of Queensland and obtained his Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Fellowship in 2005. He also undertook a year of Fellowship at the Birmingham Hospital, UK, in Congenital Cardio-thoracic Surgery.

Doug has extensive experience and special interest in lung transplantation, adult congenital surgery, and complex and redo valvular surgery and minimally invasive valve surgery.

Cassandra Vale (pharm)

I am currently the Team Leader Pharmacist in the Adult Intensive Care Service at The Prince Charles Hospital, having spent the past 5 years in this position and 5 years prior to that in the specialist Heart Failure & Cardiac Transplant role. I have a keen interest in individualised and targeted patient management, particularly in the area of antimicrobials. My time at TPCH has meant I have had significant exposure to and experience in implementing, understanding and interpreting the evolving role of therapeutic drug monitoring in severe infection, particularly in the infective endocarditis population.

Topic: "Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in IE- to do, or not to do".

Exploring the evidence for TDM in IE, and considerations for the role of TDM in different clinical presentations.

Mbakise Matebele (ICU)

See bio in convenors section below.

Speaking topic:"IE in the critically ill"

Dylan Bartholomeusz (nuclear imaging)

Associate Professor Dylan Bartholomeusz, MBBS, MD, FRACP

Dylan is a Senior Gastroenterologist and Nuclear Medicine Physician at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Head of Nuclear Medicine in SA Medical Imaging. An Associate Professor in Medicine at Adelaide University and faculty member of the SA Health and Medical research Institute (SAHMRI) his research interests are in inflammation and infection imaging, novel radiopharmaceuticals, gastrointestinal function, body composition and sarcopenia, Positron Emission Tomography in gastrointestinal malignancy and theranostics in prostate and pancreatic cancer.

Proffered Paper Orals

Dr Natasha Marcella Vaselli^1,2,3, Mr Harrison Gibson⁴, Dr Frazer Kirk^5,6, Dr Katherine Garnham¹

"A retrospective study investigating the Aetiology and outcomes of Blood Culture Negative Endocarditis in a Tertiary Centre in Queensland".

Ernest Tee, Vanathi Nagendra

Infectous Diseases Department, Liverpool Hospital, Sydney, New South Wales

"Single-centre Case series of Gram-negative infective endocarditis and cardiac implantable electronic device infections".

Simon Briggs,¹ Eamon Duffy,¹ Hasan Bhally,² Matthew Broom,² Patrick Campbell,³ Rebekah Lane,¹ Stephen McBride,⁴ Genevieve Walls,⁴ Simon Dalton.³

¹Infectious Disease Unit, Auckland City Hospital, Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland

²Infectious Disease Unit, North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals, Te Whatu Ora Waitemata

³Infection Management Service, Christchurch Hospital, Te Whatu Ora Waitaha Canterbury

⁴Infectious Disease Unit, Middlemore Hospital, Te Whatu Ora Counties Manukau

Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy for patients with Enterococcus faecalis endocarditis using continuous infusion intravenous benzylpenicillin plus intravenous ceftriaxone

Fahed Ahmad, Richard Zhang, George Youssef

St George Hospital, NSW

"Bicuspid aortic valve endocarditis: A tertiary institution retrospective cohort study".

The location:

Brisbane is the place to be in October!!

October is the month when the old Queensland advert "Beautiful one day.. perfect the next!" rings most true.

Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast  and Toowoomba are all short drives/ bus-rides (or train ride for Gold Coast) from the venue.

Bring the family for a Queensland holiday and squeeze Australasia's major endocarditis symposium into just one full day!

An optional riverside networking dinner on Saturday night is also part of this event, at "Officer's Mess" New Farm.

The Symposium will be held in the Education Centre of The Prince Charles Hospital (TPCH), on Rode Road, Chermside, Brisbane.

The Convenors

Robert L Horvath MBBS (USyd) FRACP FRCPA

Robert Horvath is an infectious diseases physician at The Prince Charles Hospital (TPCH) in Brisbane , and a Microbiologist at Pathology Queensland.

HIs career spanned NSW, ACT and Queensland (including Torres Strait and Cape York).

In 2015 He co-founded with John Sedgwick the Infective Endocarditis Working Group (IEWG)  which evolved into ieQ in 2018. He co-founded  ACE (Australasian Collaboration in Endocarditis) and is currently the chair. He also is a co-founder of QFIG (Q fever Interest Group) and is currently on it's steering commitee. He was a convenor of the 2019 Endocarditis Symposium, also held at TPCH. He also established Queensland's first funded Infectious Diseases Telehealth service  which provided remote services to an entire HHS  (Wide Bay population 289,000).

His Clinical and research interests include cardiovascular infections, Q fever, and various viral infections.

Dr Mbakise Pula Matebele BMed (Newcastle), FCICM

He is a Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care at The Prince Charles Hospital Adult Intensive Care Services since 2017. He is a fellow of the College of Intensive Care of Australia and member of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society.  After graduating in medicine at the University of Newcastle and completing an internship with the Northern Sydney Area Health Services, he moved to Queensland. He then completed his intensive care training through the Queensland Intensive Care training pathway. On his current role as an Intensivist, he is also a Medical Donation Specialist. He is an ECMO retrieval specialist with the Queensland ECMO Retrieval Services and the Prince Charles Hospital. He is the Co-chair of Infective Endocarditis Queensland (iEQ) and a member of the steering committee of Australasian Collaboration in Endocarditis (ACE).

He is currently a Senior Lecturer with the University of Queensland and Griffith University School of Medicine. He is a course instructor in the ECMO and CALS Instructor course.

His interests are the perspectives of infective endocarditis in the critically ill patients (before and after cardiac surgery).  He also had interests in the use of albumin and fluids in cardiac surgery. He is currently the principal site investigator for the multicentre, innovative and adaptive  “CALIPSO” trial and previously the QKR-309 trial. He has been a site principal investigator for multiple ANZICS multicentre trials at the TPCH  (NOTACS and SAGE-ANZ). He was awarded the New Investigator Award in 2019.

John F. Sedgwick MBBS PhD (UQ) FRACP FCSANZ FASE
Dr. John Sedgwick is a clinician academic and cardiologist. He is a Senior Staff Specialist (part-time), providing Echocardiography services at The Prince Charles and Caboolture Hospitals, as well as supporting medical students in his role as Deputy Head of the North Learning Community Year 2 (Secondment, part-time) within the Prince Charles Hospital Northside Clinical Unit, The University of Queensland.
John is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, American Society of Echocardiography and Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand and has been certified in Adult Comprehensive Echocardiography with Diplomate status by the National Board of Echocardiography (USA). He has been awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Medicine from the University of Queensland, with his thesis investigating the role of echocardiography in infective endocarditis (IE). John is a co-chair (academic) of Infective Endocarditis Queensland, a committee member of the Cardiology section of the Steering Committee of the Australasian Collaboration in Endocarditis (ACE) andis an Advanced Life Support Instructor (ALS2) with the Australian Resuscitation Council. Professional interests include medical education and collaborative endeavors in the field of IE.

Professor Eugene Athan OAM

Director of the Barwon South West Public Health Unit. Professor of Infectious Disease at School of Medicine Deakin University. He is the Co-Director of the Centre for Innovation in Infectious Disease and Immunology Research (CIIDIR) a collaboration between Deakin University and Barwon Health with an operational budget of $5million per annum. Vision is to study diseases of public health importance, translating laboratory insights into clinical care, and public health policy. Flagship programs include medical device infections, a biofilm laboratory, Mycobacterium (M.) ulcerans, COVID-19 and Staphylococcus aureus research. He leads a diverse team of 80 early and experienced researchers comprising of molecular biological, microbiological, environmental, material scientists, public health specialists, epidemiologists, and clinicians. He has over 230 publications in peer reviewed journals and has several grants including a FDA Long COVID cohort study. He is a senior Council member of ISCVID and a PI for SNAP study. He is an experienced clinical trials specialist with more than 25 advanced trials including Chief PI for the GSK SA-5AG phase 2 trial of an S. aureus vaccine candidate.

Prospective Sponsors:

If you are interested in sponsoring this exciting event with a multi-disciplinnary attendance, please email ieq@health.qld.gov.au for a prospectus.

Download Sponsorship Prospectus PDF below

IE symposium sponsorship prospectus (PDF, 0.9 MB)